REFILE-After execution, Sri Lanka to phase out maids going to Saudi

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Last Updated: Thu, Jan 24, 2013 16:50 hrs

(Fixes headline)

COLOMBO, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka will gradually stop
allowing women going to Saudi Arabia to be housemaids after a
Sri Lankan was executed in the country over the death of an
infant in her care, the Colombo government said on Thursday.

The Indian Ocean island nation recalled its envoy to Saudi
Arabia in response to the beheading on Jan. 9 of Rizana Nafeek,
who was sentenced to death in 2007 accused of killing her
employer's daughter while she was bottle-feeding.

The government said it would raise the minimum age for
female domestic workers to be eligible to seek employment in
Saudi Arabia to 25 years from the present 21 with an eye on
eventually stopping such employment altogether.

"Gradual phase-out is the idea," said government spokesman
Keheliya Rambukwella. "We can't stop it overnight. It's a
gradual process and increasing the age limit is part of that."

A third of the two million Sri Lankan maids working abroad
are in Saudi Arabia, according to the country's foreign
employment bureau.

Expatriate worker remittance, the top foreign exchange
earner in the $59 billion economy, hit a record $5.43 billion in
the first 11 months of 2012, higher than its annual peak of
$5.14 billion hit in 2011, central bank data showed.

Many households in the Middle East are highly dependent on
housemaids from African and South Asian countries.

In some cases of reported domestic abuse, maids have
attacked the children of their employers after they were
mistreated themselves. In the case of Nafeek, the Saudi Interior
Ministry said, the infant was strangled after a dispute between
her and the baby's mother.
(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Shihar Aneez and Sonya
Hepinstall)